Retainers and ghouls: Companions to perform tasks for the character, or NPCs that provide support and special abilities in missions. Or maybe those bartenders at the elysium are combat ghoul npcs under control of the current prince?

Storydriven, user-submitted character building: Train Stealth 4 (Specialty: Crowd blending) and the player is prompted for details on when and where the character picked up its skills. Character progression could be placing your various learned skills in something of a gant chart, providing a chronological overview of the character's stats.

User-validated character names: One way of dealing with trolling character names is a user-controller validation. A character starts out as an unrecognized fledgeling and later (when maybe 10/0 approvals/denials have gone through) his name's displayed. Or even better, the name is never displayed. Characters are known to each other systematically by hidden IDs, whereas the names of the characters are whatever the player types in when a contact is made, either with NPCs or other players.

Age and character progression: Kind of tricky since new characters preferably can't start out as elders. By adding more stats in the above mentioned gant-ish chart you add experience to your character. The sum of all that experience levels out to a character's age progression from fledgeling up to elder. Age is not seen by other players but only perceived via paleness (if opted / not spent blood) and any official recognition the character has. Any tremere tasting blood or medical analysis of blood may just have old data (loss of memory?) on the approximate age or density of the blood and need to re-check the samples.

Status: Gain recognition from NPCs, clans, harpies and so on. Depending on faction it might give you free blood at the nearest elysium, access to parts of of Nosferatu sewers in city, +2 for occult research if friends with the Tremere in that city and so on.

Non-democratically chosen princes: The pen is mightier than the sword, but not always.

Lore: A lore-system that unlocks conversation options, special abilities and contact with various entities would be cool, but a kind of achievement-hunting list of lores that describe the world would be an alternate approach. Either way, WoD is filled with lore and there's gonna be crawling with players knowing alot of stuff about it. Some kind of lore system is gonna be needed for new players to pick up on the backstory and terms, and veterans of WoD will need to know what differs WoD online from the old WoD.

Make coteries, not guilds: I really can't see a guild of 200 vamps marching towards a city, nor any prince that could stand against them. Grouping should be small and decentralized, allowing players to found coteries (or packs) that have a maximum number of members. Members of the coterie share benefits from working together (easier feeding, local recognition, shared alliances, ability to take on group tasks) but also disadvantages such as enemies of a specific member or disdain from a rivalling coterie. Players should be able to join several coteries, hidden as well as official, while also being able to have some kind of group membership / status as a clan mate, a recognized vamp of the camarilla and so on.

Some letting loose, some hard grips: What have we learned so far? There's always gonna be some guy who wants to play a flying warlock, and there's always gonna be someone who wants to play a Camarilla-infiltrating black hand tzimisce infernalist inquisitor. I'm cool with the latter if it's tied to gether with some kind of reputation / title / quest, players should have the possibility to play their strange bloodline or choose their disciplines as a caitiff only to later realize where they're really coming from. Being able to create a unique characters is very important, but we don't want an elysium full of flying warlocks and gargoyles.

User-submitted content: Here's an MMORPG that actually stems from a real RPG. Tons of players are gonna be old tabletop gamers and LARPers with lots of experience in creating setting. Let the collective citizens of each city help to build it in terms of places, backgrounds, layouts, both information wise and design/layout wise. A character's haven should feel personal. A kindredified version of the Sims where I can plan my mansion or make room for my coffin in my 1 room apartment but add extra security layers and sprinklers would be cool. At least there has to be some way to show off Resources or my Ventrue family's heir, vanity rocks.

Legacy: Players should be able to build their family trees of biological relatives, embraced people, ghouls, allies and enemies and players should be able to play each others respective. This way my character's personal standing with the Toreador in city X might be ruined by a botched conversation my friend's character had with them.

Events: World and local events. Everything from a bloodhunt or domain vaulderie to a world-wide anathema hunt or conclave. Put a CCP intern on roleplaying an archon rallying the nearby camarilla cities for a siege against a newly-turned anarch state. Let a developer join the world as a justicar to publically execute exploiters.

A very early public alpha/beta: By introducing players early, the feedback from roleplayers can be introduced at an early stage and help shape a very mature product, both technically and in terms of a new gameplay experience.

Characters are known to each other systematically by hidden IDs, whereas the names of the characters are whatever the player types in when a contact is made, either with NPCs or other players.

I love this idea!

A very early public alpha/beta

These things are questionable in my opinion. Users typically don't know what they want and you generally just get a tidal wave of feedback that's impossible to sift through. People also tend to interpret open alphas and betas as free trials nowadays and unfinished parts of the game can lead to bad press. Unfortunately, 99.9% of testers don't write posts like you do in response to those sort of things. I suspect CCP will do what they did with Dust 514 and have open beta testing only relatively near the time of release.

Why thank you! I really hope you're wrong though. An mmorpg of this magnitude could turn out awesome and for it to do that, I believe they will have to involve players early on. There's just too much competition out there today to have the risk of delivering a product that doesn't adhere to customers expectations.

Nice post. It got me all excited once again. Here are some of my thoughts:

Retainers and Ghouls: I really think they should limit the amount of NPCs in the game. The role of ghouls should be played by players. From what I've heard, we will start the game as humans and we will need to make contact with a player vampire to whom we will offer our services for a certain amount of time with the promise of The Embrace at the end. Contracts could even be drawn up and deals could be made and perhaps there would be ramifications if the contracts are broken. This is the key to player driven content: there are endless possibilities to what deals can be struck, how reliable the Vampire or Ghoul is and what services can be offered. It is not limited by the budget or time limit the game designer had.

Story driven, user-submitted character building: There haven't been many details provided on how they will handle the disciplines and skills, but this would definitely be a cool addition.

User-validated character names: I think when users can have power over how someone names their character there is also a potential for trolling eg. an entire alliance/guild/clan reports a rival clan leader's name. Hopefully admins would be smart enough to see through this, but still, there is potential for troll.

I really like the no-displaying-of-names idea. Nothing would ruin the immersion more than a glowing sign above every player's head, especially "XxMcScrotterballstitsxX".

Age and character progression: Again, since we'll start out as humans and hopefully be embraced (the idea behind starting as human being that we will eventually be able to choose to be werewolves or mages, or vamp hunters) we will always start as fledglings so I definitely think the age of players' vampires should be displayed in some way. Or maybe it will be something for which observational skills pay off i.e. you can see how other players react to them (with deference or indifference) or how the vampire reacts to you (look down their nose at you or treat you as an equal). Perhaps some players could be able to masquerade as an older vampire, thus moving up the ladder faster. Again, many many possibilities.

Status: I never played the tabletop (only The Masquerade: Bloodlines game) so I'm not sure what harpies are, but again I'm a big advocate for player driven content so naturally I wouldn't like an actual reputation type system with NPCs and factions like in WoW and other MMOs. I just think that gaining a reputation with individual players or a clan (player clans, not NPCs) through deeds (bad or good) or through word of mouth would be a far more powerful and game changing aspect. Imagine you've been playing for 6 months or a year. You've lead coups, defeated princes, driven away a Sabbat invasion. Your name strikes fear and respect into the heart of players the world over. Humans and Fledglings will be flocking to you, offering their lives and nights in service for you and your pack/coterie. Boy, I have a nerd erection.

Non-democratically chosen princes: I love this. Sometimes one loses patience for the masquerade of humanity, diplomacy and etiquette and prefers a good old violent and devastating rebellion. I think a Prince and his cronies would have to be especially tyrannical, lazy or inept to allow this to happen. Still, the possibility should be there.

(the idea behind starting as human being that we will eventually be able to choose to be werewolves or mages, or vamp hunters)

Is this for real? I thought that it was starting with Vampire, and maybe eventually branching out to Werewolf and Mage. It would be cool, as I'm bigger in the latter two than Vampire, but it would be harder to implement.

First, Werewolves are born, not made, and they find out about being a werewolf generally around puberty. It varies somewhat, and could make it into the twenties without the First Change, but it's unusual. If implemented as a choice, I would be interested to see how that works. Maybe a character finds out about some kind of previously unknown heritage, and follows a quest the results in the Change? And then there's the matter of Lore. Adding Werewolf lore right out the gate is a massive undertaking. Vampire alone is big enough.

Mage could maybe be easier. People "awaken" through traumatic events or epiphanies. The transition and the lore isn't nearly as monumental, but the magik system, at least in the RPG, is terribly complicated. Deliciously complicated. I'd be fascinated if they could to it justice in a video game.

First, Werewolves are born, not made, and they find out about being a werewolf generally around puberty. It varies somewhat, and could make it into the twenties without the First Change, but it's unusual.

Ah, well this is where my lack of tabletopping shows I'm afraid. I think the head guy in charge of the game (the name escapes me, so does google) said they were hoping to eventually implement werewolves, mages, hunters but that they would focus on Vampires for release. Werewolf DLC?

I'm hoping the NPCs (ghouls and retainers) will be both playable and companions controllable by the characters.

Regarding playing humans/ghouls, I really do hope there will be some kind of pay-off for playing an ordinary human, the ability to do so without having nothing to do. Since they've hinted more races might come later on (or maybe they will just be antagonists?), it'd be natural if people started out as a human and two years later that character decides to become a hunter, or manifests his werewolfness, or dies and becomes a wraith and so on.

I really think that if a multitude of users are the ones allowing/disallowing names, there wouldn't be any bickering as to which names would be OK and which not. Most people are not assholes :)

Half way through my last post I needed a little break and was terrified of it being deleted or something, so I posted prematurely.

Lore: As a fan of the genre and universe but only a player of Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines I would definitely love to learn a bit more about the lore. Perhaps collectible books could be found lying around in Elysiums or traded between players, stored in clan headquarters. Should add to the immersion too.

Make coteries, not guilds I personally don't think coterie sizes should be limited. But I think that one thing that could discourage huge sized or even more than 10-15 player coteries would be the possibility of betrayal and backstabbing which would be more likely to occur in a larger group of less well known and trusted players.

Just thought of something in regards to coteries and recognition. It'd be cool of MVP votes from PVP or major group mission/raiding/whatever system they'll use were distributed to a player and his different factions. Say for instance that a character gains 1 MVP vote, he receives 0.5, the camarilla 0.25, his clan 0.125, his coteries share the rest... This would allow a MVP system to play an integral part in shaping characters and factions.

Has that really been stated explicitly? I thought they left it kind of ambigious whether or not we'll encounter other entities or if we'll be able to play them in later expansions.

It'd be awesome if we could roll a werewolf, mage or whatever in a later expansion, but cross-overs between the games tend to be very unbalanced. Of course they could re-balance this and change it from the way it was in old world of darkness, but then there wouldn't be any big advantages of either race.

Yes, they have said it a few times and even in their recent presentation. But of course, we'll never truly know until they do it. As far as balance, I am sure they will balance it enough to be playable, but that is supposedly a very difficult thing to do. Even Blizzard has yet to perfect it and I haven't seen anyone who has. Either way, everyone has their own favorite supernatural race..so I doubt balancing will be a major issue.

Cool. Though I wonder what the time frame would be of such expansions. A year, two? There are alot of old games to cover, changeling, werewolf, wraith... not to mention the smaller and newer ones. Demons would just be silly. A dark Risen event or representatives from Orpheus medling in Giovanni affairs would be cool too, I guess.

It's a shame that Changeling: The Lost can't be included. I really prefer Lost to Dreaming, though since WoD-online is going to be oWoD based i guess it can't be helped. One other faction i'd like to see more than any other is Hunter. Hunter has always been my favorite WoD venue, both versions. The only setting that comes close imo is Changeling: The Lost.

otherwise, old-world Werewolf is pretty good, but I don't think Wraith or Mage would work. Maybe if they incorporated Geist instead...but then that's crossing WoD generations.

Yeah, I'm very curious on what the game universe will be like. How much will be new, what will be kept from oWoD...?

If they delivery a new race/subsystem as major content updates I'd be impressed, but I think it's too optimistic wishing for anything but one or maybe two system expansions or - more likely - seeing other entities as parts of questline/world but not playable.

Personally I'm from V:tM largely and only tried the other oWoD briefly, so I'm happy either way ;D

What city are we getting? It's vampire-centered, so are they rolling with canon chicago? o.O now that would be interesting, if each "content expansion" brought with it a new city, (and its associated supernatural). first expansion gave us philly and hunter. second gave us...miami and changeling: the lost (screw it, I WANT NEW CHANGLING!!!)

also, if you have never played the new changeling, I highly recommend it. i'm in a C:tL parlor larp, and it's pretty damn awesome.

The Eve fanfest video showed New York and Amsterdam. CCP have been letting us know there will be different cities (though all on a single shard server) based off of real cities. I'm hoping this will be adapted to userbase regions, but maybe they just chose cities that look cool, are easy to write backstory for or whatnot.